Moving cross-country is not just about packing boxes but navigating a maze of expenses and unexpected hurdles. When my family decided to leave Florida for Missouri, we faced surprising costs and tough choices. In this episode of Beyond Budgets, Deb shares how her family balanced the hefty quotes from national moving companies with more affordable, creative options like PODS and regional businesses. Discover the practical tips she learned along the way, including hiring a local young entrepreneur and managing holiday schedules to ensure a smooth transition for her kids.

But the adventure didn’t stop there. Buying a house in Missouri came with its own set of challenges and surprises. From replacing windows and an old water heater to unforeseen plumbing issues, Deb candidly discusses the realities of unexpected homeownership expenses. Reflecting on our choice to buy a home after just one in-person inspection, she highlights the pros and cons, emphasizing the stability renting can offer during such significant life changes. 

Episode Highlights

(00:03) Moving Expenses and Budgeting Tips

(11:27) Unexpected Homeownership Expenses

(20:44) Home Buying Lessons Learned

Connect with Deb Meyer

Website: WorthyNest.com/podcast 

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Listen to Episode 18 on the reason behind Deb’s relocation

Full transcript

Deb Meyer (00:01.678)

Hello and welcome to Beyond Budgets, episode 22. I'm your host Deb Meyer and I'm going to talk about my journey over the last month of moving and buying a new home in Missouri. Just to give a little bit of context, we moved from Florida to Missouri in early July. I'm recording this on August 13th. I know it'll get released Thursday of next week, but did want to share a couple of insights while they're fresh on the moving process and hopefully be a guide of things to be considering if you are contemplating a move, whether it's a local move or cross country like we did. I would say we're half cross country going from Florida in Southwest Florida to greater St. Louis.

So I'm going to delve into some of the moving expenses and then some surprises we discovered at the new-to-us Missouri house. Okay, without further ado … on the moving expenses, I was shell-shocked when I started looking up pricing for moving companies. Just to give a little bit of context, when we moved down to Florida, it was pre-pandemic.

We went down there in late December of 2019 and lived with my parents for a couple of months while our new construction house got finished. We had our stuff in storage for a couple of months using PODS and it really wasn't that big of a deal. I think the total cost to rent pods for a four-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath house at that time was like, $4 ,000 or under to go that distance. And it wasn't that big of a deal.

On this move, I was expecting something similar and shocked when I got the national mover quote. I'm not going to name the company name just out of courtesy because I'm sure they recognize they have high prices, but the quote was over $13 ,000.

Deb Meyer (02:20.366)

And I was talking to a new neighbor here in Missouri who said they were trying to move from Seattle to Missouri a couple of like a year ago and they were getting a quote of like $30 ,000 from a national mover. So really crazy high costs if you go with a traditional moving company where they're gonna pack up everything for you, load everything on a big truck, you wait there for several days.

And then eventually they'll give you a call and say, hey, we're ready for you to be home at your new place in your new location. It can get very, very costly. And there's a lot of unknowns with the timeline. You also have to check because they're very specific about what supplies they're going to include and how much level of assistance they're going to be giving.

In our case, before I even got the quote from the National Mover, I had to do a very full inventory on video of each and every room and what we were thinking about bringing and what we were thinking about leaving in Florida. All right, so I did a comparison quote after I got that $13 ,000 initial quote from the National Mover. And I said, all right, Pods was good to me the first time around. Why don't I see what Pods will charge now?

And I was pleasantly surprised. They said about $3 ,000 for a single unit. But we weren't exactly sure if we needed one or two units, depending upon how much stuff we were taking. So realistically, it probably would have been closer to six grand if we used them for two units and know we could fit the vast majority of the things we wanted to move. But the other thing would have been we would have to hire the moving help separately.

or more of a DIY solution where they'll deliver a pod to your driveway. You take your time loading the pod and then you call them and a few days later they call and or once they once you call them they will arrange a pickup time so they bring the pod back on their truck and then they transport it to whatever new location you need.

Deb Meyer (04:36.706)

So for a long distance move like we had, pods was another good option to consider, but again, there wasn't as much clarity around the timing of when things would happen. So even if we got a pod delivered on our ideal date, it could be several days before they're ready to even pick it up. And we were dealing with the 4th of July holiday as well. So I didn't love the uncertainty around the delivery time.

And I really wanted to be able to move as quickly as possible where we would move our stuff out of the Florida home and then a couple days later, hopefully have the stuff in the Missouri home unloaded. Now with that, I just said, you know, there's gotta be some other solution out here. Cause I obviously wasn't willing to pay what the national mover was quoting.

I wasn't willing to do the pods and have some uncertainty around the timeline because I already had some of my two younger boys set up for camps here in Missouri and I needed to be up here fairly quickly. So I asked my son, my oldest son, said, hey, do you have any ideas of friends that might be able to help or other solutions? And he said, yeah.

One of his friend's older brothers runs a business. He's about 18 years old, just graduated high school. And he's been doing like this outdoor business in our neighborhood for a couple of years. And he also has some other kids in the neighborhood and other connections in the community that are local and, you know, strong boys that are willing to help. So I reached out to him and he said, yeah, I'd be interested in helping.

move. I'm even willing to get a rental truck, drive the truck up to Missouri. I'll bring one of my friends along and we can work something out. So we went back and forth on pricing. Ultimately, I hired him for $6 ,500, which I thought was a pretty fair rate given some of the comparison quotes that we received and the fact that I knew it was going to go to a small business in my community.

Deb Meyer (06:54.762)

He had already done it once for a family relative. gone from Las Vegas all the way to Florida for a relative of his earlier prior to our move. So he had, you know, an idea of how to drive a truck, a fairly substantial truck, long distances. And yeah, just had a great attitude about it. So we were pretty happy with the end result in terms of getting him. He was willing to

load everything on a Saturday and by the following Tuesday, we were unpacking those same items in Missouri. So it worked out very well. Myself and my three boys flew up early Tuesday morning. So we were there for the moving truck unloading and we ended up paying like a little bit extra just in terms of tips and had him and his helper stay at our house for a couple of days. So.

helping with food costs and things like that. overall, we still kept it within a reasonable budget. And it was a good third solution to the big name companies. So again, you don't have to go through the same route. But if you are considering moving and it's a longer distance move, that might be something worth considering, just trying to figure out some local solutions.

see who you have in your network that could be a good resource. And some of the things to be thinking about too when it comes to moving costs would be the items that you may overlook as you're kind of planning and projecting for the true expenses. One would be the moving supplies themselves, such as boxes, tape. I realized the boxes at the big box stores like Home Depot and Lowe's were

considerably higher than I remember. Just like one wardrobe box to house some clothes that you're hanging, easily $20 just as a starting point. Boxes for files, I have multiple files for my home office. Had to buy many of those special boxes that are heavy duty and can fit many.

Deb Meyer (09:16.11)

file folders and those came in more substantial packs, but one pack would be like $60. So the moving supplies definitely added up. The other costs that you you might be overlooking in the process if you're moving would just be getting your current home up to speed so that it could be sold or rented. A lot of buyers or even renters in this market are really discerning and they want to see fresh coats of paint.

they want kind of a move in ready place, whether they're, they're buying or renting, and it does cost a lot of money. Even if you're doing it yourself, if you're investing in high quality paint and make sure you have all the right supplies, it can get pretty costly. The other thing to be thinking about on the moving costs is just in our case again, because it was a larger move and my husband was still staying down in Florida, working on the painting of.

of our existing Florida house. When I moved up with my three boys, that cost a lot of money just to furnish the new house in terms of groceries and other perishable items, cleaning supplies, things like that. We didn't have any of those with us on the moving truck. well, obviously perishable food items, you're not going to bring on a moving truck.

But with cleaning supplies, that was something he was keeping behind at the Florida house. So we just invested in some new ones here in Missouri. But it can add up. think I spent over between $500 and $600 at Target just within a day of moving here to Missouri, just trying to get some basics for the kitchen and cleaning supplies and shower curtains, things like that.

The other thing to be thinking about is the furniture itself and whether it's even worth moving. We ended up leaving some furniture there in Florida. Luckily, we were able to convert it to a rental property and the renters were kind enough to purchase the furniture that we left behind. We negotiated that with them ahead of the move. But yeah, we probably had

Deb Meyer (11:39.552)

I would say at least.

Deb Meyer (11:43.886)

Gosh, I think it was at least 10 % of our furniture we left behind and the rest we, you know, fit into this Penske, the largest Penske truck they had to offer. but we still ended up, you know, having to buy some new furniture and things that weren't in the best of shape to, to move. it does cost a lot to buy new. And then if you want to move into a new house, oftentimes you're like, Hey,

I want to decorate new. It can get very expensive very quickly if you're not staying close to a budget, really understanding what the true needs are in the new to you home. All right, let's take another break. I do want to just share that Beyond Budgets is relatively new. We launched it in November of 2023 and

I hope if you're enjoying this that you take a minute to share an episode or two, if it's this episode or one of the prior ones you've listened to, just share it with a friend, another parent that you think could benefit from it. Thank you.

Okay, moving on to surprises in Missouri. So when we bought the home, keep in mind this particular house, we had been looking for a little while and had saved for quite a while prior to buying this house. If you go back to my prior episode on making decisions in alignment with your family values, one of the things I...

mentioned in that episode is just how much my faith is important to me and how I wanted to get my kids back into Catholic schooling and back into a strong Catholic community. And that's what we have here in Missouri. So we had it kind of on our hearts for long before we made this transition that this was a big possibility of coming back to Missouri. And so we did save pretty aggressively. The house that we ended up purchasing here was

Deb Meyer (13:54.374)

The prior owners had vacated in February of this year. They put it on the market in April and then we ended up closing on it at the end of May. So the house did sit vacant for quite a while if you think about it from February to July when I eventually moved in. And what we found in the inspection report, we knew there were some bigger issues that we wanted to invest in.

One of those was the windows, like several of the windows we knew weren't working properly and we would either need to fix them or just consider replacing windows entirely, which replacing an entire house of windows is very, very expensive. I technically don't have a quote yet, but I knew it was going to be probably upwards of $20 ,000 to do the whole house if we wanted to replace windows.

We also knew the water heater was original to the house. The house was built in 2000, so 24 year old water heater that would need to be replaced right away. The other big project that we knew about was just the idea that there was no deck on the back. So if you try to leave the kitchen on the main floor, there's nothing out there. You'll fall a deep fall.

And I don't love the idea of having to go down into the basement and walk out to get to the backyard. So I personally really love the idea of having a deck, even if it's a small deck, just something to have an avenue down to the yard that doesn't involve going through the basement. Yeah, so those were the kind of three big items that we knew coming into this that we would want to invest some money into.

improving the house. And then there were a couple of minimal issues or so we thought were minimal issues on the inspection report, like every toilet in the house was loose. And we were trying to figure out what that really meant, but we didn't know and the inspector didn't have, he's not a plumber, he's a general home inspector. So we didn't really know at the time whether to further investigate that. Well,

Deb Meyer (16:12.78)

I will tell you with vacant homes, several issues can arise the longer they sit and they're not occupied by anyone. And in our case that unfortunately was the result for us. We had some pretty major plumbing issues as soon as we moved in. So like I said, we closed at the end of May.

My husband came up to work on the house at the end of June and lay a new floor in our basement. And when he was here, he realized the morning he was supposed to fly back that there was a leak in the master bathroom toilet. And we made a decision at that time, okay, don't worry about the finishes on the floor and getting like the molding and all of that just.

let's focus on getting a new floor in the master bath and a new toilet installed. And he did. He got the master bath toilet installed, the flooring laid. We thought all was well, but he did notice some discoloration in the living room ceiling when he was here at the end of June. And I didn't think much of it. Well, I get here on July 9th.

and we're unloading everything and I start to see, the color's pretty bad in that ceiling. And I just kind of try to say, we'll get a plumber. They'll take a look at it. It'll be fine. Unfortunately, the plumbers, it was harder to get ahold of a plumber right away and our realtor did come to the rescue there, but we ended up having extensive plumbing issues by Friday afternoon.

the ceiling actively started leaking and I realized this was a much bigger ordeal than we had originally assumed. So long story short, we did get it fixed the following week, but just getting contractors in to be available for the drywall repair, well, I'll go into all the expenses. So the cost to repair just this

Deb Meyer (18:28.462)

plumbing leak in our master bath toilet was the plumber. Mold testing. Fortunately the mold testing came back where we didn't need mold remediation, but if that was necessary that would be another expense. The drywall repair. Then we had a mudder and taper come for the drywall to make it look more seamless with the ceiling and then finally painting the ceiling. So

Luckily, we're a month removed from that very big project and surprise. And we've gotten everything done except the ceiling is not yet painted, but it will be soon, hopefully next week. So yeah, and I'm sure as you're thinking about this, listening to it, you're probably like, well, why the heck didn't they file an insurance claim?

Part of me has gone back and forth on that, when the plumber saw it, he's like, no, this is a much deeper issue that's been going on for a while. But he said, it's unlikely that you'll get any money from insurance because you already had your husband lay a new floor and lay a new toilet. they're gonna, you know, if you get in a legal battle or whatever with the seller of the house, they're probably gonna say it was your fault for.

laying a new toilet even though every single toilet has issues in this house. Anyway, long story short, we're on a good pathway now, but we had a lot of surprises and costly surprises at that. and I will point out too when I'm talking about this, it's not like we went for the lowest possible price point house and knew it was going to be this big fixer -upper like

we really came in at a price point where we knew the bones of the house were good or so we thought. And we were just kind of caught off guard by some of these additional expenses. So even if you're in the market for maybe a little bit more expensive home or mid -range home, just because it's in that price point doesn't necessarily mean everything's good with it. So again, just be cognizant, do your due diligence and also

Deb Meyer (20:45.326)

having some additional cash savings in retrospect was really helpful for us. We knew we were gonna put more than 20 % down, but we weren't exactly sure how much to be putting down. And luckily before closing, we decided to not put quite as much down as we had originally anticipated because we wanted a reserve for the three big expenses that we knew about like windows, deck, and the water heater.

We haven't actually gotten bids on the deck or the windows because of all these other issues that have arose in the last month. But it was helpful for us just to have some extra cash cushion. And I'd urge you, if you're thinking about a move, not only to consider those moving costs that I outlined earlier in the episode, but also to think about potential problems that could be uncovered as you're moving into a home, especially if it's a

an older home. Ours is a 24 year old home. And then the other thing on the movie and I'll close out the chapter here. One of my kind of non -financial regrets is just not leaving enough time in Florida to say goodbye to some of the people I really miss. And hopefully you're listening to this podcast now and just know even if I'm not directly touching out and reaching out by text or phone call, just know I'm thinking about you. Okay, so enough about me, here are some lessons for you. Number one, give yourself some financial cushion. That's a huge necessity when you're contemplating a move, even if it's a local move. Number two, consider the cost beyond the new mortgage payment and utility costs.

In our case, we knew our mortgage payment was going to be higher because we bought our original Florida house at a lower price point in a low interest rate environment. We knew there were some additional costs making this move, but we were cognizant of those. We weren't as cognizant of some of these hidden costs that we hadn't anticipated quite as much in making the transition.

And then number three, try renting if you're unsure about the decision long-term. That's another big thing. I could go into a whole other episode about it, but if you're not sure that you want to be in a specific area for the next five to 10 plus years, you might want to consider renting for a year or two just to get a feel for the area. Home ownership is very costly and there can be a lot of challenges with it. It's also great when you get to personalize things, but I wouldn't say just wholeheartedly, because you own a home now, you automatically should own a home the next time you make a move. Renting can be a nice kind of breathing space to get your bearings. Especially in our case, we had to close on this house with only seeing it one time for an inspection in person, that was me. And yeah, a lot of lessons were learned.

I'm not saying we wouldn't buy here if we knew what we know now, but I will say it was a lot more stressful than we had anticipated in the beginning. Okay, that's it for today's episode.